Step Right Up

Chapter IV. Red Wagons

The managerial hub of every circus is still called the red wagon. It may
be in a modern white air-conditioned tractor-trailer rig, in a Pullman coach,
or resting on four spoked, steel-banded, wooden wheels, but it's still the red
wagon. That's where the tickets are sold, the men are paid, and the telephones
are connected. It's where the owners and managers hang out when they're on the
road, and behind its high caged windows policy is established and major
decisions are formulated.

Despite the continuing renaissance of American circus, many city folks
remain unaware that the circus still exists outside the annual arrival of the
Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus in their civic arena. Many
folks in the country and small towns across America completely escape the
attention of the of the tent show booking agents that are still crisscrossing
the country. "I thought the circus was dead — I mean, except for the
Ringlings," is a common response to our inquiries into what Americans know of
the modern circus.

Nonetheless, rumors of the circus's death, like Mark Twain's, have been
greatly exaggerated. There are dozens of tented shows, ranging from one to five
rings, visiting small towns annually across America. Some of the larger shows
are developing the capacity to play in civic arenas in competition with "The
Greatest Show on Earth." Both traditional and "new-wave" tented shows are
making inroads into larger city markets; and indoor Shrine circuses help to
comprise a coast-to-coast, year-round circus season.

There have probably been over two thousand circuses entertaining
Americans since troupes first began to perform in the new world. Over the years
they have come and gone in response to economic and social pressures governing
both taste and pocket money. In 1890, perhaps a hundred shows toured the
country, but numbers were drastically reduced by the 1893 depression. We have
already seen the effects of the great 1929 stock market crash on the circus
business in America. However, economic crises and depressions somehow seem to
result in increased social needs for the escapism and wonder of the circus
arts, and the cycle renews itself. The circus goes on. Pointedly, Judy Finelli,
current Artistic Director of the Pickle Family Circus, recently suggested that
the current resurgence of interest in the circus is at least in part
symptomatic of a modern world which is sick enough to need the circus more
fervently than ever.

The circus by its very nature is a transient business. Owners,
performers, and titles come and go, passing into and out of public awareness
with alarming frequency. The Big Apple Circus' Associate Director Dominique
Jando points out that it is one of the most expensive forms of entertainment in
the world, and that makes it inevitably a high risk business. The Beatty-Cole
show, for example, has a daily overhead of about $21,000. Rain or shine, show
or no show, the people, the animals, and the machinery need to be fed,
merchants need to be paid, and it all must come from gate receipts. With no
such incoming receipts in the off-season, a circus still must maintain
equipment and personnel, and owner salaries may have to be cut to keep expenses
down.

Circuses continue to die every year, overwhelmed by low attendance,
retirements, changing priorities, sloppy artistry, rising insurance rates,
sickness, or by any of a number of large and small disasters that can cut the
tenuous life lines of a risky and expensive business. Recent years have seen
the passing of Circus USA, the Toby Tyler, the John Herriott, the Mighty
McDaniel and the Lewis Brothers circuses, for example. But new circuses also
continue to be born every year, sometimes from scratch, and sometimes out of
the ashes of a dying circus. Some of the newest are the Cirus Flora, the Jordan
International Circus, the Reynolds Circus, and Bill & Martha Phillips'
Phills Bros. Circus, new in 1989. The new Double M Ranch Historic American
Circus, a tent show quartering in Hastings, New York, hits the road in 1990,
and will be routed throughout the Northeast. There are even plans to make it a
rail show in the future.

What seems clear from the many names of circuses dying, being reborn,
being launched, combining and spinning off, is that circus itself is a
permanent institution. Some of the newer circuses will not be around in a few
years, and probably even some of the older ones will join them in oblivion. But
others will spring up to take their places. And somewhere in the back yards of
every circus in America, there are unknown individuals, truck drivers, talkers,
candy butchers, or performers, who long to take out their own show. From their
ranks will spring the next generation of circus impressarios: future Ringlings
and Forepaughs and Robinsons and Baileys.

It takes a special breed of human being to run a circus. In 1973, the
program of the Circus Vargas, then still called the Miller-Johnson Circus,
called its manager, an "entrepreneur, impressario, businessman, progressive
showman, unrealistic traditionalist, foolhardy administrative genius, dreamer,
perfectionist, and impossible nonconformist." That list of attributes, unlikely
and contradictory combination though it may be, might well be applied to any
circus owner of the last two hundred years. It is no wonder that the number of
long-term circus owners, who have owned or managed their shows for, say, twenty
or more years, is deceptively small. The business takes its toll.

Section A. All For Fun

Circus owners are a varied lot indeed. Some were born into circus
families. Some ran away with the circus as youngsters and worked their way up
through the ranks of ticket takers and candy butchers. Others are entrepreneurs
and businessmen. And still more see themselves as creative artists, sometimes
even serving as headline performers. There are owners who never miss seeing a
performance of their own shows, and others who never leave winter quarters.

Why would anybody want to own a circus? Everyone knows that its a very
tough business. The short historical list of people who were successful at
running or owning their own shows suggests that a lot of pain went with the
job. Plenty of owners, including P.T. Barnum, made fortunes, only to lose them
again. Many, like Dan Rice, the circus-owner clown who wanted to be president,
died as forgotten alcoholics. Yankee Robinson, the boom-or-bust pioneer owner
who gave the Ringlings a boost at the beginning of their career, died broke. At
least for these and many other men, there was always a chance for economic
success. That had to be enough, and in many cases success was irrelevant
anyway. Consequences, and the possibility of failure were not part of the
equation when the enterprising Gilbert Spalding began his circus career. He
took over the management of the Nichols Circus because they had defaulted on a
personal loan and were behind in their payments for paint he had sold to them.
He was a bored pharmacist with little to lose. The great Philadelphia meat and
horse dealer, Adam Forepaugh, like P.T. Barnum, needed a little humbug in his
own life; and he and recognized that his circus audiences needed it too. Using
his own first name to justify the inclusion of biblical references in his
advertising, he allowed himself to challenge the anti-circus prejudices of the
church with a smile. Despite his deceptive claims, his circus was neither
religious in its thematic approach, nor was he reputedly very "Christian" or
honest in his relationships with his employees and audiences. A ruthless
businessman, nonetheless he created one of the largest and most successful
circuses in the world.

For all these men, the norm, the mundane, the ordinary, were simply not
acceptable. The fun of owning a circus was in the process, in the game itself,
and not in the final score. D. R. Miller would rather have a patron tell him
how much he enjoyed the show than hand him a thousand dollar bill. No false
sense of permanence, stability, or security lulls circus owners into the
business. They continue to feel that circus enterprises last as long as they
last, and then they're over; that's all. Only a handful of today's shows have
been around or expect to be around for more than twenty years.

The allure does not always come from potential fame, either. As we saw
in the last chapter, Coup and Bailey deliberately chose to remain modestly out
of the limelight, despite the fact that both were the great driving forces
behind Barnum's circus enterprises. In his day it was Bailey's circus; every
major decision and order was his to make, yet few outsiders ever saw him. Many
modern owners too are rarely seen by the public, content to remain quietly in
the background.

For both the loved and the hated, the winners and the losers, money was
never the issue either. It's true that in the last chapter, we saw enormous
fortunes being made by the likes of Seth Howes, Jerry Mugivan, John Ringling,
and many others. But these people were aggressively enterprising individuals,
and there were undoubtedly easier, cheaper and less stressful methods for them
to earn their fortunes. Clearly more to the point is that circus owners and
managers were men and women on the fringe, on the edge of the socially and
culturally acceptable, and they thrived on a sense of adventure, risk, and the
unusual. What was most important to them was having a good time, living their
dreams.

The great Sells-Floto Circus is a good example of a show which was
created for the sheer fun of it all. It was started by two publishers with the
Denver Post, who whimsically named the show after their sports writer, Otto Floto.
In 1906 they hired Willie Sells, adopted son of one of the original Sells
brothers of circus fame, to be their general manager. Sells took the show on
tour for only one season and then left, but his name remained as a perpetual
part of the show's extended and more impressive title.

All these men were possessed of a positive spirit in the face of
adversity that they were determined to share with the public at large. They
wanted people around them to have fun, so that they too could have fun. Such is
the ambition of contemporary owners as well. To a person, when asked why they
were prepared to accept all the risks of putting a modern circus on the road,
they replied, "It's fun."

Obviously there's an element of nostalgia to it all, a joy in recreating
a time from America's past when values were clearer and simpler. But it's more
than that, too. Contemporary circuses exist in a contemporary world, and they
have value to us only when they can speak to us in our world. Owners and
designers of the modern circus experience recognize that. They want above all
to teach us that the imagined boundaries of our lives, the ones that prevent us
from having fun, are only illusions. They want to demonstrate to us that
despite all the pressures, dangers and demands we face from society and the
modern world, life is still full of wonder, and joy, and fun. It is just the
kind of spirit that the circus has been and will always be so well equipped to
convey. Fourteen-year-old Matthew Colbert, travelling with the 1989 edition of
Vermont's little Circus Smirkus, sums up the driving philosophy of most circus
owners simply and honestly: "I like to see people laugh. That's hard
enough."

Section B. Traditional Big Tops

At least three of the big tented shows of today have the scope and
polish to make their audiences feel what some of the giants of the golden age
of the circus must have been like: The Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus, the
Carson & Barnes Circus, and the Circus Vargas. They may serve as examples
of the kind of large tented circus which emerged directly from our historical
traditions, and which is still successfully operating in contemporary America.
The backgrounds and approaches of their owners and managers are typical of
those found throughout the business since it first began.

The Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus carries one of the oldest names in
the circus business. Winter-quartering in Deland, Florida, it has earned the
nickname the "I-95 Show," because it travels primarily up and down the east
coast along Interstate 95. It's an old-fashioned, three-ring circus, presented,
as their 1989 program states, as "a continuance; a salute to the oldest purely
American form of entertainment…in the time-honored tradition of an era
gone by, under a rope and canvas arena larger than a football field." In its
eight months on the road, the Beatty-Cole show claims to present 486
performances, seven days a week, traveling across 10,000 miles in seventeen
states, with 170 performers and staff in 78 vehicles.
N

Since the stroke of midnight that ushered in 1982, the show has been
owned first by John W. Pugh, joined several months later by E. Douglas
Holwadel. When bought from Florida State University, Beatty-Cole was in shabby
condition, both artistically and financially. In what Holwadel calls a real
"sweetheart" deal, they acquired the circus and $600,000 in bad debts for $2
million, payable over twenty years at 3% interest.
N Just the year before it had been
appraised at $2.5 million and donated to Florida State by Jerry Collins, a
multi-millionaire dog track owner and the last survivor of a triumvirate that
had owned the show since the mid-1950s.

Soft-spoken, articulate, and always nattily dressed, Johnny Pugh glows
with a look of professional competence. He provides the vital practical
experience, and the expertise in the logistical and performing operations
needed on the Beatty-Cole show. He is the son of "Digger" Pugh, a British show
business entrepreneur who produced theatrical and variety shows throughout
England and the Continent. Johnny got his first stage contract when he was less
than a year old, and in August of 1988 he passed his fiftieth anniversary in
show business. He first came to America as a boy in 1942, and he appeared with
the Cole show before returning to England with his family during the war. When
he came back to the Cole Show in 1948, all of ten years old, he appeared in a
center-ring trampoline act with the great clown, Otto Griebling, and remembers
being terrified as a boy by Zack Terrell and his unpredictable cane. Following
a three-year stint with the Mills Bros. Circus, he returned to England and
worked in the television and film industries. He appeared at the Palladium with
Benny Hill. During the filming of Burton's and Taylor's
Cleopatra, he was Richard Burton's double, and the man in charge of the
elephants; only later did he discover that he and every last one of his
elephants had been left on the cutting room floor. Once again back in the
U.S.A. in 1961, he went to work for the Beatty-Cole show, and has been there
ever since. He likes to say that's longer than anyone still active in the
circus has worked on any one show. In 1964 he broke his leg while working on a
trampoline, and began to shift his focus from performance to the front office;
within two years, he was the manager, and by the time he became a co-owner
eighteen years later, he was thoroughly experienced in every aspect of circus
operation.

His new partner, on the other hand, was brand-new to the field. Doug
Holwadel was a Vice-President of Marketing with the Santee Cement Company, in
South Carolina, and he traded on the New York Stock Exchange. He led a
stressful life, and three operations for cancer led him to seek a change. Since
he had loved the circus all his life, when Johnny offered him the opportunity,
he jumped at the chance to buy in, helping to raise the $200,000 in working
capital needed to put the show back on the road so it could start earning
income. Three years later, he joined the show on the road as the booking agent,
and brought with him his marketing techniques and business expertise. He
introduced computers and streamlined the whole operation, helping to cut costs
and identify prime audiences. He likes to say that he left New York's Wall
Street in a Brooks Brothers suit, and he is still wearing it. He approaches
prospective lot leasers — mall owners who might perhaps be expecting a
circus owner to be someone in cowboy boots and a gold chain — as though
he were closing a real estate deal, in his Brooks Brothers suit and a
button-down oxford shirt and tie. He takes his time and seeks no immediate
answers. "If they give you an answer off the top of their heads, they haven't
thought it through clearly," he says.

The enterprise and the partnership have been successful in returning the
Beatty-Cole show to a state of fiscal and artistic good health. Johnny Pugh is
fiercely proud of the turn-around he and Doug have managed to pull off in only
a few short years, and he plans to extend his records by remaining actively
involved on the lot for many years to come. Despite the new stresses inevitable
in running a circus, even Holwadel's cancer has been in remission. He says he
has never felt better in his life, although he still finds it impossible to sit
still during a full circus performance. The two owners often take turns
traveling with the show, although Johnny finds it hard to stay away. They
remain good friends, and their different styles, areas of expertise, and
backgrounds complement each other to serve well the famous names and long
tradition their circus carries.

The Cole goes back to William Washington "Chilly Billy" Cole, who was
born in 1847, the son of an English clown and contortionist. In 1871, the same
year that W.C. Coup was persuading Barnum to get into the circus business, the
Cole & Orton Circus was founded, and was later among the first to play in
small Western towns. By 1884, the W. W. Cole show was traveling on thirty-one
railroad cars out of St. Louis, Missouri. From that show the modern Beatty-Cole
circus measures its lineage, celebrating its centennial year in 1984. One of
the most widely respected names in the circus business, Cole sold his popular
and successful show in 1886 and became a partner for a while with Barnum &
Bailey. Ten years later he rescued a financially insolvent James Bailey on his
European tour. One of the circus' most successful entrepreneurs, "Chilly Billy"
left an estate of $5 million when he died in 1915.

W. W. Cole's great-great-nephew, James M. Cole, represents a separate
line of the Cole name in circus history. Born in 1906, he saw John Robinson's
circus when he was a boy, and dreamed of owning his own. He began by working
for the shows of the American Circus Corporation until they were sold to the
Ringling empire. In 1938, he started his own indoor circus, a "school" show
operating in high school gymnasiums along the back roads of New York and
Pennsylvania. "Mr. Cole," as he is affectionately called by friends and
strangers alike, operated the little Cole All Star Circus for short winter
tours every year for fifty years, "taking the circus to the kids in the gym,"
as he says. It is still operating successfully, now under the aegis of his
former ringmaster, Billy Martin. In the summers he operated the James M. Cole
Circus under tent, and managed a variety of others over the years. Why? Because
he "enjoys being around people, loves seeing them have fun, a good way to be if
you own a circus," he says.
N
When he retired to Sarasota, Florida, in 1987, he had become one of our oldest
and most widely loved premier circus showmen. Like so many circus men, Mr. Cole
can look back and smile on a long and fruitful career, living out a boyhood
dream and adding to our rich circus heritage.

Meanwhile, the "Cole Brothers" title itself was created in 1906 by
Martin Downs. The title was subsequently used by a variety of people before the
big depression. In 1935, Jess Adkins and Zack Terrell revived it, and with
equipment from the Christy and Robbins shows they built it back to prominence.
It featured for their first three years a young wild animal trainer named Clyde
Beatty. Beatty had already appeared in every major circus of the day, and had
almost been killed by his powerful lion, Nero, in 1932. In 1939 the Cole
Brothers show became the last circus to abandon the tradition of the
horse-drawn circus parade. The circus was acquired in 1957 by the Acme Circus
Corporation —Frank McClosky, Walter Kernan, and Jerry Collins—who
merged it with the Clyde Beatty title they had rescued from bankruptcy just the
year before. McClosky and Kernan had only just been fired from the Ringling
show in 1955, and they were eager to provide their former employer with some
competition.

In the meantime, Beatty had been performing in circuses bearing his own
name and others throughout the '40s and early '50s. It was Beatty's show, under
the new management, that became the last to leave the rails in 1956. Following
the merger, Beatty remained a featured performer in the combined show until his
death from cancer in 1965. The following year, Art Concello came on as manager,
and almost succeeded in duplicating his old Ringling solution and sending
Beatty-Cole into Madison Square Garden, which would have doomed it as a tent
show. However, Jerry Collins and Frank McClosky, one of the last of the old
school of circus showmen, prevailed. The show survived under canvas, albeit
meagerly, until 1979, when McClosky passed away. In 1981, on Johnny Pugh's
advice, Collins gave his circus to Florida State as a tax write-off and thus
set the stage for its recovery to one of the largest and healthiest tented
shows in modern America.

Another huge tented show leaves Hugo, Oklahoma, every March. The
gigantic Carson & Barnes Circus plays only one-day stands in small towns
across America, mounting two performances and raising and tearing down its
five-ring big top every day for 240 days. In 1988, moving on eighty vehicles,
the 200 men and women on the tour traveled 18,000 miles, through twenty-eight
states, border-to-border and coast-to-coast. They carried with them a large
collection of animals: thirty-seven horses, a rhinoceros, a giraffe, a
hippopotamus, a liger, lions, tigers, llamas, camels, a moose named McDermott,
and most crucial of all, twenty-three elephants.

In fact, the show's owner, Dory R. Miller, is one of the biggest
elephant lovers in the country, possibly owning more of the animals than any
other single American. His favorite bull is Barbara, who was named after his
daughter and who has been with the show for almost forty years. As a young
"punk," Barbara was a frequent escapee. Spooked by a falling pole in Prairie du
Chien back in 1977, she decided to take a long stroll through the Wisconsin
countryside, pursued for miles through back yards, corn fields, and a nursing
home by her handler and a large crowd of troubled officials and onlookers.
Unruffled, Miller grumbled, "If so many people hadn't chased her, she wouldn't
a' run so far!" He excused the feisty Barbara's second escape with "Youngsters
have to have a little fun while they're growing up, don't they?"

Dory Miller is a living circus legend, who with his wife Isla celebrated
fifty years of circus ownership in 1986. No other owner alive today can make
such a claim. D. R., as he likes to be called, has been involved in more than
24,000 performances; that's over 12,000 set-ups and tear-downs in over 12,000
towns.
N He is responsible for
training and launching the careers of many younger circus managers and
performers, and for importing from Mexico some of the finest aerial acts ever
to appear in American circuses. D. R. can still be found at performances,
settled into his lawn chair by the back door at center ring, topped with his
baseball cap, and with a bag of Red Man tobacco always at hand. His small lanky
frame is alert to everything that happens in the big top, as he nods his
approval of the performers, or occasionally registers his dissatisfaction with
a sidelong spit of tobacco juice. "We sometimes don't got the best," he says,
"but we got the biggest." He obviously loves every part of the circus world he
helped to create, and his crews and performers love him too. They are all his
family. Carson & Barnes really is a true family show: D. R.'s daughter and
son-in-law, Barbara and Geary Byrd, are co-owners of the show, as is Isla; and
his grandchildren Kristin and Traci are performers.

In his 1985 route book, General Manager James K. Judkins, wrote of the
effect of D. R.'s absence from the tour due to a hospitalization:

The entire season was clouded with the fact that they
were not here. If you think about it, D.R. and Isla really didn't have to do
anything. Others easily took over the miriad of chores that D.R. and Isla
attended to. It's not what they did, it's who they are. It is their presence.
Isla can make you feel good just by laughing. D.R. can see more sitting in the
tent with his eyes closed than most can with binoculars. Just knowing he is in
the tent causes everyone to do their best. He can straighten out a problem by
just addressing it. Having the Old Man show that he was interested in the
situation was enough to clear it up. One of his scowls could sober up even the
drunkest soul, or at least make him head for his sleeper. He would say good
morning to a Big Topper that everyone else forgot. Compliment the cookhouse
people, when others might complain. Check on a new baby. Smile when he parked
you in the morning. Tell a joke, that wasn't funny but would cheer you up.
Straighten out the camels. The Old Man could make your day. Years ago D.R.
wasn't the Old Man. Obert was. It took D.R. nearly 50 years to become the Old
Man. Nobody is in any hurry to assume that title, and for now it belongs to
D.R.
N

D. R. first entered his father Obert's circus business in 1924, when he
was eight years old. When he wasn't working the sideshow platforms, he was a
trick pony rider, or the calliope driver, and eventually he was known for his
wire act. In 1939, he and his brother Kelly and their father started a small
dog-and-pony show called the Miller Brothers Circus, which grew into the Al G.
Kelly-Miller Bros. Circus. Kelly-Miller was where the great American truck
circus was developed: The spool truck, the seat wagons, and an impressively
efficient logistical system for "high grass" operations were all originated
there. In 1942, at the invitation of a local circus fan and businessman, the
circus moved to Hugo, in the Red River Valley of Oklahoma, where it has been
quartered ever since. Hugo then joined the ranks of Somers, Delavan, Baraboo,
Peru, and Sarasota, taking on the role of still another Circus City, USA. Since
that time, it has been the home of at least one and sometimes as many as five
circuses.

Even during the war the Kelly-Miller show prospered, thanks to the
efforts of Isla and Kelly's wife Dale, who moved the show while the boys were
away. The ladies drove the trucks and rigorously followed the 40 mph rule,
reputedly holding to that speed in the city, in the country, and on the lot
— saved on gas, clutches, and shifting, and everyone else learned to stay
clear!

Kelly died in 1960, and Obert in 1961, leaving behind them a morass of
estate taxes and a greedy Uncle Sam. In 1962, the ship carrying the circus to
Canada caught fire and sank off the coast of Nova Scotia. No lives were lost,
but it was the final blow to a show by then plagued with financial and legal
worries. Still, D. R. would not cry "Uncle!" He gathered the remnants of the
old show and others and invented a new name he and his family picked out of
thin air, uninfluenced by anyone ever named Mr. Carson or Mr. Barnes. He
mounted the current Carson & Barnes Circus, and turned it into what is
today one of America's greatest circuses.

D. R. is justifiably proud of his career, his accomplishments, his
elephants, and his circus. He was once introduced to Kenneth Feld, the
impressario of the Ringling show: "Oh, Mr. Miller," said Mr. Feld, "you're the
fellow with all those elephants." "That's right, Mr. Feld," said Mr. Miller,
biting off a characteristic plug of Red Man, "and I've got a circus to go along
with them, too."
N

Both the Carson & Barnes Circus and the Beatty-Cole show lay claim
to being the biggest circus under the big top. Still, a third major American
circus enterprise calling itself the "largest" and "greatest" tented show
touring America today was owned and operated by Clifford E. Vargas before he
succumbed to cancer on September 5, 1989. Actually, Vargas was fully equipped
to play indoors as well as in a tent, although he preferred to use his new
Canobbio 150 by 300 foot big top. The three-ring circus traveled mostly in the
West, spending over half its touring season in California, where it was based.
It moved on twenty-three trucks, two of which were reserved just for the
elaborate wardrobe, and carried twelve elephants. Its members were proud of the
quality of their show, and they claim to have been fiercely loyal to their
dedicated and energetic manager. Vargas was involved at every level of his
show, which seems to be a common factor in most of the successful circuses on
the road today. "I don't sit behind a desk. I'm right out in the circus all the
time. And I don't ask anybody to do anything I can't do myself," he told the
Oakland Tribune in 1976. Vargas was completely devoted to re-establishing the positive
values of our circus heritage, "a return to the rich tradition of the circus as
it once was in America," as he said, although it's difficult to say whether
it's a return or an evolution. His emphasis on quality rather than quantity,
and his high level of energy and zeal made him one of the more important forces
in the industry. The Circus Vargas headlined talented performers and brimmed
with patriotism and energy. The "Let Freedom Ring" spec which closed the 1989
edition, with performers glittering from the center ring in red, white, blue
and gold is an example of the lush excitement marking the Circus Vargas'
production values.

Cliff Vargas was another in that rare circus breed of men who managed a
show for over twenty years. Born and raised in California, he got into the
circus business originally as a young man, by stumbling into the back door of
the Chicago Shrine show. Seduced by what he saw, he did promotional work for
them for a while before he returned to California and began his own promotion
company. In 1972 he bought the Miller-Johnson Circus with which he had been
associated, together with the contracts that went with it, for $250,000. It was
a small outdoor tentless show, with some trucks, props, ring curbs, and
seating. California weather made a tent the first priority, and since that time
the show has grown steadily in size and quality. With the elaborately sequined
1989 edition, the Circus Vargas celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Vargas'
association with it. As of this writing, it is unclear whether the Circus
Vargas will survive the death of its dynamic owner-manager, or whether in
another decade it will have become one of the thousands of circuses that have
faded from memory.

Section C. Little Tops

There are probably two dozen relatively small old-fashioned tented shows
currently traveling throughout the United States and Canada, and hundreds more
in Mexico and Central and South America. They play in the outlying fields, the
parks, and the recreation grounds of very small towns, and sometimes in the
bedroom communities surrounding our cities, but never in the cities themselves.
The circuses may be as small as the modest companies of performers with one-man
bands, who, like the two Liebel Family Circuses, play on the midways at county
fairs and town festivals. The Liebels' origins, incidentally, go back to
sixteenth-century Europe, and their red unit plays in a stunning
one-hundred-foot round tent, with four center poles topped by an unusual
ornamental steel arch arrangement. Small top circuses may range up to the
three-ring affairs which are big enough to create their own events, like the
Olde Tyme Circus, taken out by veteran animal trainers Alfred and Joyce Vidbel
for the first time in 1984. The Vidbels are quartered in the Catskill Mountains
of New York, and their enterprise is popularly known among audiences along its
central East Coast route as "America's Finest Family Entertainment." Some
little tops are more impressive than other little tops: they may have more
daring acrobats, more stunning jugglers, funnier clowns, cleaner set-ups,
friendlier staff, or more elephants. But all of them are exhibitions of real
skills, not illusions; and all contain the elements of humor and challenge to
human limitations that give their audiences such a fun and honest perspective
into what we are and what we can be. It is always a wonderful surprise to
discover the friendliest clowns or the most impressive balancing acts ever seen
in a little family circus, where they are sometimes least expected; and yet we
get surprised all the time. To describe each of those circuses thoroughly would
take up several books. Here we can take a brief look at only four shows, who
must represent for us small circus in America. At the same time, we mean to
suggest that there may be twenty others, equally deserving of our attention,
and we expect that American audiences will continue to seek them out.

In 1974, Wayne Franzen was a twenty-seven-year old Wisconsin high school
teacher who loved the circus. His life-long dream of owning a show finally won
him over on June 6, when he took out the Franzen Brothers Circus for the first
time. "Brothers" is an invented part of the title of so many circuses because
many owners evidently feel it has a traditional family appeal. But in this case
there really was another Franzen brother originally involved. Neil left the
show after only three months of its first tour, having discovered that more
money could be made with less work in almost any other line of employment.
Wayne has been the driving force behind every aspect of the show. He began with
a little 40-by-60-foot tent, a herd of goats at liberty, a horse named Tonto, a
spool truck made from a converted potato truck, and a corn crib for a lion
cage.

From those small beginnings, the Franzen Brothers Circus has developed
in fifteen years into one of America's favorite little shows. Its new bale-ring
two center pole Scola vinyl tent is small, focusing attention on its single
ring. It would accommodate well over 1,000 spectators, but Wayne frequently
chooses to set up only one side for seating. Now quartered in Florida, with an
office in Wapakoneta, Ohio, the circus travels throughout the Midwest and East
on thirteen trucks. To control costs, everyone in the small company doubles up
on jobs, and Wayne remains involved at every level of show management, from
truck driving to performing. In fact he is the most prominent performer,
opening the show with his full cage act, and later reappearing with his
elephant and Tonto, the educated horse who has been with him from the
beginning. He also appears on the aerial ladder, but it is the animal acts with
which he is most closely associated. It is highly unusual for such a small show
to have a full cage act, with six tigers and two lions, but that was Wayne's
dream from the beginning. Raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm, he has a natural
feel for working with animals. He prefers to work with each cat, goat, dog,
horse, elephant, camel and llama singly in the training process, feeling that
they all thrive on the personal attention. It is clear that Wayne thrives on
it, and his love for the animals pervades the atmosphere of the whole show.

The other three little tops that are to serve as our representatives for
small circuses in America are three-ring affairs. Two of them, the Roberts
Brothers and the Great American shows, are quartered near Sarasota, Florida,
still the most popular circus haven in the country, as it has been since the
Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus moved there in 1927. The
third one, the Kelly-Miller show, is based in Hugo, Oklahoma.

The Roberts Brothers Circus is a genuine family affair. It is run by the
charming Doris Earl, and her two sons Jeff and Robert T. Jeff is the vice
president and secretary, who manages the show, and Robert is the president,
remaining in Florida to run the main office. Doris is the treasurer, and
frequently travels with the show as a candy butcher. The Earl boys were raised
in the circus; Doris and her late husband took the Robert G. Earl show out as
early as 1964, when Doris was a featured aerialist. Now, the Earls are on the
road from March to October, playing up to two hundred stands with two shows per
day. They travel from Florida to Maine and back, and for three of the seven
months of their tour they are in Pennsylvania. They know they'll never get rich
in this business, but they love it; and they're proud that after years of hard
work, they've paid off debts and are beginning to show some profits.

Roberts Bros. moves on about twenty vehicles. It carries no wild animal
or cage acts, but there are a variety of ponies, llamas and small animals, and
one elephant, Lisa, who they have leased from D. R. Miller since the show
began. Their tent is about 70 by 210 feet long, small enough to fit on the ball
fields of back-road America.

Once again the whole tone of the show is determined by the active
presence of congenial owners. It's clear that everyone on the lot likes
everybody, and that carries through to ringmaster Brian LaPalme's personable
appeal to his audiences. Not only is LaPalme the ringmaster, the magician, and
one of the country's most impressive fire eaters; he also runs a popular cook
house, although his cohorts often accuse him of preparing meals by blowing on
the food with his "volcanic breath." It's a small troupe, and everyone pitches
in to help with the big jobs. The tear-down takes little more than an hour, and
when they've gone the lot is so clean it's difficult to tell that the circus
has ever been in town. Of course, they've had some help from the armies of
happy local youngsters who hang around to pick up trash. In return they get all
the hot dogs and popcorn they can eat from the concession stand, which is the
last truck to pack up and leave.

The Great American Circus is also quartered in Sarasota, Florida, and it
plays exclusively in the eastern half of the United States, covering 246 dates
and an estimated 15,000 miles in 1989. It's a small show, traveling on about
ten trucks of its own with seventy-five people. The new incarnation of the
Great American has developed into a tidy little three-ring show, featuring
several elephants, including four baby Africans, a lot of dogs, and some very
nice acts. No longer is Tiny Tim featured "Tiptoeing through the tulips," and
the new red-topped blue and white vinyl tent, which can seat over 2,200
spectators, gives a unique, warm, reddish glow to all the performances. Circus
people always look as though they have long and fascinating stories to tell,
but the wonderful group of characters assembled for this show could undoubtedly
keep us enthralled for hours. They range from the 24-hour man, feisty David
"Spider" Alton, a former Ringling employee and ex-prize-fighter weighing in at
91 pounds, to the quiet and personable business manager, Rod Ruby, an
ex-Methodist minister.

The Great American and the title to the now defunct Circus USA are owned
by Allan C. Hill. He runs his entire operation from phone banks in Sarasota and
doesn't often travel with the show. Allan has been close to the circus all his
life. He is the son of Bill Hill, once boss canvas man and general manager for
Hoxie Tucker's circus; his mother was a third-generation aerialist and
equestrienne. Allan has never been a performer, but he was raised as a candy
butcher, and quit school after the eighth grade to stay with the circus. He
joined the Hoxie Brothers Circus as a promoter in 1972, after a stint in
Vietnam had earned him a bronze star. In three years he quadrupled the market
for Hoxie by instituting a new up-to-date telemarketing system he still uses
today, and in 1983, Allan was able to buy the show. Hoxie's second unit became
the Great American Circus. In the winter of 1989, his Children's Theatrical
Group toured "Santa's Magical Circus."

The Kelly-Miller Circus is quartered in Oklahoma, under the shadow of
its giant sister, the Carson & Barnes show. In fact, the two shows spring
from the same roots, and D. R. and Isla Miller are part owners of this one too,
along with Lorraine Jessen and David and Carol Rawls. When the Big John Strong
tent show went out of business in 1983, it was acquired by the Millers. Because
the Al G. Kelly-Miller Bros. title had been retired since the old show became
Carson & Barnes, it was decided to resurrect it for a new show using the
Strong equipment as its nucleus. David Rawls became its manager, and the title
was later reduced to Kelly-Miller. It travels primarily throughout the South
and the Midwest.

The Rawls family is a good example of just how thoroughly one circus
family can provide talent for many different circuses. David manages
Kelly-Miller, and his wife Carol is the Artistic Director. In 1989, their
sixteen-year-old daughter, Sasha, is an office assistant, and six-year-old
Kelly is an occasional performer. David is the oldest son of Harry E. Rawls, a
respected circus veteran who has worked with the likes of Jimmy Cole and D. R.
Miller. He helped to launch the new show and serves as its contractor in Hugo.
Bobby, his second son, used to be the manager of the Beatty-Cole show, but he
has given up life on the road and now owns the AAA Sign Shop in Mead, Oklahoma,
making a career as a talented circus and sign painter. His creative work
appears on the Beatty-Cole, Carson & Barnes, and Kelly-Miller circus lots.
A third brother, Chris (Harry C.), took over his management job, and Chris'
delightful wife Maria is now the Beatty-Cole office manager. The fourth
brother, Michael, is Concessions Manager, and the youngest, William is the
newest announcer for Kelly-Miller. Three sisters have opted out of circus
careers.

With three generations of Rawls involved, Kelly-Miller is proud to call
itself a family circus. David is a knowledgeable circus businessman, trained by
D. R. Miller, and he is eager to promote his show as friendly, responsible,
clean family fun. It travels on thirteen show-owned vehicles, and another
thirty or so private trailers and campers. There are sixty-five to seventy
people on the tour, including what seems like an army of small happy children.
One of them, ten-year-old Dora, is an amazingly accomplished contortionist and
equilibrist, and a reminder of the true paradox of "children of all ages." One
summer day before a show in Frederick, Maryland, she borrowed a friend's bike
to play with. As she wobbled precariously past a circus fan, as tremulously as
any other uninhibited little girl with no balancing skills whatsoever, she was
overheard to say, "Oh, oh! I don't know whether I remember how to ride a bike!"
Yet a half hour later she was perfectly balanced on a tiny platform in the
center ring, gracefully bending over backwards and through her legs to drink a
cup of pink lemonade placed on the floor in front of her.

Kelly-Miller carries a full menagerie tent, open as a sideshow
attraction for separate admission, and stocked with three elephants, three
camels, three goats, one llama, the requisite snake, and one tiger. The
declawed tiger was acquired for humane reasons, and is a non-performing pet,
kept in an over-sized cage and lavished with love. David no longer believes in
carrying wild animal acts because of safety concerns for both the animals and
the public, not to mention skyrocketing insurance rates. The blue and gold,
three-ring, four-pole main tent is a new Italian Scola Teloni design, housing a
talented and dedicated family of performers. David Rawls and the company were
to have a unique opportunity to combine the best of both the tented and indoor
circus worlds by setting up their entire big top and back yard inside the
Lansing, Michigan, Civic Center for the 1989 Labor Day weekend Riverfest
celebration. However, when the Center discovered how many holes they were going
to drill in the floor, it was decided to place the tent conventionally
outdoors.

Each of the four representative circuses discussed in this section has a
unique contribution to make to the American circus scene, but they have much in
common. They must all sink or swim on the income from the red wagon alone, and
they are at the mercy of the wind and the mud. Nonetheless, box office receipts
are up in all four shows, a sign of renewed interest in the circus experience
which is encouraging to their owners and managers. Increasingly more common for
them all are old-fashioned "Straw Houses," the traditional name for sold-out
shows, when straw was spread out in front of the seating for over-flow
audiences. None of them would choose another line of work, despite all the
headaches of salary-juggling, booking, transportation, insurance hikes, and
local regulations that make modern circus management so difficult. Although
Franzen's single-ring one-sided presentation breaks with some preconceptions of
what circus is, all four shows are expressions of a genuinely American folk art
form, steeped in the traditions and lore of the American frontier spirit. At
the same time, they have modernized their operations with trucks, computers and
telephone communications which allow them to improve their connection with the
people of contemporary rural America.

Sub-Section 1. Other Small Circuses

These four shows and their managers are certainly not alone. There is
the spiffy little Culpepper-Merriweather Circus, quartered outside of Phoenix,
Arizona, which features among several fine acts the bull-whip routine of "Cap"
Terrell Jacobs, grandson of the famous wild animal trainer; there are only
twenty-two people on owner Red Johnson's payroll, and they can fit only 700
spectators in their tent, but everyone is happy. John and Betty Reid's Reid
Bros. Circus in Oregon is still plugging away in the far West, as are the
Cirque du Plaisir and Cirque Universal in Canada. There is the Plunkett Circus
in Texas; David & Trudy Harris' Circus Kingdom, a Christian show which
performs at prisons, orphanages, and homes for the mentally disturbed among
other audiences; the Flores Family; the internationally famous Circus Zoppe
Europa; and the Allen and Bentley and Frazier and Franum and Friendly Brothers
Circuses: The list goes on and on. Small tented circuses are quartered all over
the continent. The people who run them, as well as the people who attend them,
are having fun. They always have, and there is no reason to expect that they
will ever stop having fun.

Section D. Coliseums

"The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, Inc."
remains too long a title for most of us to wrap our tongues around. It's
interesting to note that even today, over seventy years after the combined show
was created, it gets informally abbreviated to "The Ringling Show" in the
midwest, where the brothers had a strong reputation, and the "Barnum," or
"Barnum & Bailey Show" in the East. Whatever it's to be called, there is
little question that it has been the king of the indoor circuses since its last
canvas tear-down in 1956. Its history was outlined in the last chapter, and few
circus-goers need any introduction to "The Greatest Show on Earth."

Since 1969 there have been two units of the Ringling circus, the Red and
the Blue, traveling at any one time in North America, and then in 1988 the
special international "Gold" third unit was created to play under tent in
Japan. The two arena units travel for eleven months of the year, and return to
quarters, now located in Venice, Florida every other year. In less than one
month they mount a completely new show, with a new theme and new acts, and
they're off again. Every year brings a new edition out on the road for a
two-year tour; in the middle of the tour, everyone gets one two-and-a-half week
vacation. So the year 1990, 120 years after Messrs. Coup and Barnum went into
business together, embraces both the second year of "Gunther Gebel-Williams'
Farewell Tour" for the Red Unit's 119th edition, and the Blue Unit’s new
120th edition of the Big One. The New Blue Unit show features the best of a
fine Italian circus, the Circo Americano, that Kenneth Feld purchased in its
entirety in 1989. His father had carried out a similar coup once before, when
he bought the entire German Circus Williams in order to get Gunther
Gebel-Williams as his headliner. This time, Flavio Togni and his family, the
fourth generation of another of Europe’s oldest circus families and twice
the winners of Monte Carlo’s Golden Clown Award, make their American
debut. Flavio presents liberty and high school horse acts, a mixed horse and
elephant act, an elephant ménage, and a rhinoceros-panther-leopard act.

The Ringling units are the headliners in an entertainment empire which
also includes five Disney ice shows, the Siegfried and Roy Magic Show, and a
variety of live entertainment special extravaganzas. The statistics are
impressive indeed. By their own estimates, Kenneth Feld productions are seen by
some forty million people every year. In an average year, each unit of the
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus travels over 14,000 miles, to
thirty-nine cities, over a forty-nine week period, giving an average 535
performances a year. Each unit carries around 250 performers and 100 animals,
depending on the particular year. Each unit travels with almost one hundred
animals, including twenty-one elephants and thirty-two horses. Each week, each
unit consumes twelve tons of hay and 5.5 tons of meat, and hauls away 210 cubic
yards of trash. Every year, one of the two circus units travels within one
hundred miles of 85% of the American population, and business is booming.

Its sheer size and Las Vegas show-quality have led some old-time circus
fans to think of the Ringling enterprise as fostering size and quantity over
quality, form over substance, profit over art, and glitz over talent. There
have always been critics who rightly or wrongly level such charges against the
circus, and especially against the new directions instituted by Johnny and
Henry North. Johnny died in 1985, while the affable Henry Ringling "Buddy"
North still serves as a vice president of the Corporation. It's true that when
Kenneth Feld's father and uncle took a big chance and finally bought the show
from the Norths in 1967, they thought they could make money. Profit was quite
naturally the primary goal among these seasoned show businessmen, and they were
outrageously successful: Irvin and Israel Feld assumed a $1.7 million debt and
bought the circus for a bargain $8 million. They revitalized its presentation
and doubled its size. Four years later they sold it to Mattel Toys, Inc. for
$50 million. But they weren't through with profit yet. Mattel had no idea what
to do with a show earning them major losses, and sold it back to the Felds in
1982 for only $22.8 million. "The good Lord never meant for a circus to be
owned by a large corporation," said Irvin.
N

Ironically, the Feld enterprise is today the largest entertainment
corporation in the world, and it is still raking in enormous profits. Son
Kenneth took his own firm hold on the reins when Irvin died in 1984, and he
vehemently denies any allegations by his critics that he may not be
sufficiently interested in the true art of the circus. He insists that his
life-long dream remains "to create the best...to present the finest...to
enliven...to enlighten...to entertain!" Feld is a passionate, devoted and
tireless businessman. He is a generous supporter of any enterprise seeking to
expand awareness of circus arts, and supports the efforts of both the Circus
World Museum, in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and the Circus Hall of Fame in Peru,
Indiana. He oversaw the creation of the "Ringling Readers," an innovative new
series of publications designed to encourage children to read. Most
importantly, he strives to produce every new edition of the circus to top the
last one, seeking a unique combination of displays that will both preserve
circus traditions and experiment with new ideas. The Ringling show can afford
to pay its acts top dollar, and they can afford to seek out the best acts from
all over the world. The great tramp clown, Emmett Kelly, when he and the show
were still on good terms with each other back in 1954, wrote: "You can troupe
all over the world, and you can listen to applause in far-away places and you
can read flattering publicity from hell to breakfast, but when you open with
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Madison Square Garden, New
York City, you have 'arrived.'"
N Among performers
and audience alike, there is no question that the same incomparable prestige
still prevails for "The Big One."

However, "The Big One" is far from the only major circus currently
playing indoor dates in the United States. The Shriners have established an
annual tradition of sponsoring circuses ever since the Mystic Shriners' Yankee
Circus in Egypt was produced in Detroit in 1910. Almost everyone has heard of
the Shrine Circus, but Shriners don't actually operate circuses, except for
some concessions and amateur clowning. Circus committees of local Shrine
Temples simply lease the services of professional circus promoters, who put
together a show for them from available circus artists; or they may hire a
complete circus to perform under the Shrine name. Some circus producers like
Paul V. Kaye, George Carden, George Hubler, Tarzan Zerbini, and Tommy Hanneford
play the majority of their dates under Shrine sponsorship. Shrine-produced
circuses are no small enterprise. Taken all together, they employ more people,
attract more audiences, and play more performance dates than any single circus
possibly could.

The Zerbini and Hanneford enterprises may be used as examples of the
extreme flexibility with which indoor arena circus producers operate. They are
perhaps the biggest and the best known, and they both can keep several units on
the road at the same time. They can provide employment for performers in a
virtually year-round operation, putting off-season unemployed acts together
into entire circus performances on demand. They will play in arenas and
coliseums, in the open in stadiums and race tracks, and under canvas. They will
play under the Shrine name or under their own: The Tarzan Zerbini International
3-ring Circus, and the Royal Hanneford Circus.

The Hanneford name must be one of the oldest in circus history. In 1621,
young Irishman Michael Hanneford toured rural England with an early menagerie,
and in the next century an Edwin Hanneford participated in a juggling contest
before King Edward III. The current Royal Hanneford Circus was just created by
Tommy Hanneford and his wife "Struppi" in 1975, but Tommy figures that his
sister's daughter Nellie is at least a seventh generation circus artist.
"Royal" came into the title originally as "Royal Canadian," when the old Irish
show was touring in England, and Edwin's family posed as Canadians in order to
avoid British antagonism. The modern Hanneford show is based in Osprey,
Florida, just south of Sarasota. It can be split into two units as necessary,
and about 80% of their dates are played under the Shrine name. Beginning in
1990, at least one of the Royal Hanneford units is expected to play in one of
the new European-designed cupola'd tents.

The Royal Hanneford Circus is reknowned for its clowning and horse acts,
which developed out of a long family tradition. A nephew of the famous
"Poodles" Hanneford, Tommy grew up along with his brother George and sister Kay
Frances on the Downie Bros. Circus. As soon as he was old enough to walk, he
worked on his father George Sr.'s bareback riding act. In the mid '70s, he was
himself "the Riding Fool" of the Hanneford Riding Act, and he still serves as
equestrian director for its newest incarnation. His wife Struppi, who was
famous not only as a rider, but in a trained tiger act and as the trapeze
artist "Tajana, Goddess of Flight," now works in every phase of circus
production with Tommy.

John "Tarzan" Zerbini's popular nickname stems from the sensational
entrance to his own wild animal act that he developed in 1960, when he debuted
as "Tarzan Zerbini, Lord of the Jungle." Standing on the back of an elephant,
he thundered into the arena dressed only in a loin cloth, grabbed a rope
"vine," and swung over the bars of the steel cage, to be confronted with a
variety of "dangerous" cats. His more contemporary shows may include variations
such as the substition of a tuxedo for the loin cloth, and a pink cadillac
convertible for the elephant.

Zerbini was born into a French circus family, and came to this country
in the 1950s to appear with the Mills Brothers Circus. He subsequently went on
to work for the old Dobritchshow, one of the top Shrine shows in the country.
In the late 1970s he was finally able to mount his own show by purchasing the
assets of Hubert Castle's International 3-Ring Circus. He now operates two
circus units, and occasionally a third, based in Webb City, Missouri, which
tour throughout the North American continent each year. The two indoor shows, a
western and an eastern unit, are 3three-ring affairs, and the third is a
European-style single-ring circus that plays under canvas.
The Canobio new-style round tent seats around three thousand people, and
Tarzan likes to use it whenever he can. The tent unit travels with a fleet of
fifteen new company-owned Freightliner tractors. Tarzan performances are
growing rarer, as he and his wife Elizabeth frequently wing back and forth
between units supervising operations. Elizabeth's father, Joseph Bauer, who was
once a world-class perch-pole artist and is now a major circus producer
himself, also works with the show, and his son Joseph Dominic Bauer does both
ringmaster and "Giant Space Wheel" duties. Tarzan and
Elizabeth's lovely and graceful daughter Sylvia, the
ninth generation of the Zerbini circus family, is a frequently featured
aerialist on the single trapeze and Spanish web. The Zerbini Circus style
betrays its owners' European backgrounds, emphasizing fast-paced, strong acts
in a no-frills format, and deemphasizing the big production numbers that tend
to predominate in big American shows.

There are of course dozens more small circuses who make it their regular
practice to play indoor dates around the country. They operate all year round
but more often in the winter time, thus avoiding the summer tent season and
assuring a better pick from available talented performers who are committed to
the summer tours. George Hamid, Jr., another old and respected name in the
circus business, operates his popular Hamid-Morton Shrine Circus for a spring
tour in the East and Midwest, opening regularly at the Roanoke, Virginia Civic
Center. From the big Circus Gatti to the little shows like Jimmy Cole's All
Star and the Century All-Star Circuses, indoor circuses are big business. If we
were to include all indoor Shrine circuses and the many small "school" shows
that play short tours in high school gymnnasiums for less than one season
before they reorganize under a new name, our list would undoubtedly amount to
over a hundred contemporary circuses.

Section E. School Tops

Any look at the whole spectrum of circus in contemporary America must
include the school tops that may be helping to create tomorrow's circus
artists. We are not referring here to those dozens of tiny circuses mentioned
above that play around the country in school gymnasiums. Our concern is for a
new circus phenomenon that is growing in both numbers and quality. Circus
schools offer training grounds to future artists, as well as periodic exciting
and energetic performances, which American audiences would be well advised to
seek out.

Until recently in most of the world, and still in the United States, the
most reliable supplier of each new generation of circus professionals has
always been family on-the-job training. Some circus people are out to change
all that. In order to understand where Americans are on the scale of circus
education, let's take a brief look at the rest of the world. The most famous
circus school in the world is in Moscow, which since 1930 has offered a
demanding four-year curriculum in circus arts. The three hundred or so students
range from fifteen to twenty years old when they are admitted; only
seventy-five of them survive each year's final examinations. The school's sense
of the aesthetics of circus art, combining harmony of gesture, beauty of
performance, and strength of feeling, as well as the quality of its graduates,
has had a major influence on virtually every circus in the world. There are now
two other such national circus schools in Russia. Nearly all the socialist
countries of Eastern Europe, North Korea, and Cuba all have schools based on
variations of the Moscow model. In China, each of the 130-odd State-run
acrobatic troupes serves as the equivalent of a circus school. In France there
are three big circus schools. In Spain, Los Muchachos is the International Boys
Circus, a whole self-governing village of 2,000 boys ranging in age from four
to the late teens. It was founded like "Boys Town" in this country, as a refuge
for runaway and homeless boys, but its Circus Training School attracts
applicants from all over the world to its five-year course. And in much of the
rest of Europe and Latin America, where the circus is a revered tradition,
circuses provide plenty of on-the-job training opportunities. Wherever circus
people are valued for their artistry and not dismissed as social parasites,
there is encouragement for young people to learn the skills.

The current trend in American circus schools stems in part from the
scarcity of talented American circus artists. To the casual observer, the
number of Americans who are genuine stars as aerialists or animal trainers is
surprisingly small. It is true that circus is an international field; American
circus artists are in higher demand in Europe and the Asian countries than they
are here, while American audiences have more interest in seeing exotic acts
from Russia, the Balkan states, Mexico, and especially China. But the fact
remains that we see very few American acts. There may be a somewhat
nationalistic reversal of that trend in the offing, instigated by Chinese
reluctance to tolerate the kind of defections that followed the massacre at
Tiananmen Square in the summer of 1989. Travel limitations imposed by
restrictive governments seem to make it a good time for American producers to
tap into an American talent supply.

But where exactly is that American talent supply? As long as there are
so many state-supported acrobatic schools in China, where circus is the most
popular mass art form, there will be superior Chinese acrobats. As long as
Russia teaches, funds, and reveres its circus arts, there will be superior
Russian performers. And as long as truly talented Mexicans have the incentive
of a far superior pay scale for performing in the United States, there will be
superior Mexican aerialists. But in this country, we offer neither the training
nor the financial incentives to prospective circus artists. Only a few major
circuses can generate a pay scale that encourages American performers.
Certainly few olympic athletes would consider the daily drudgery of circus life
when they can get much higher pay by sponsoring sneakers on TV. Circus is still
a dirty word when it comes to legitimate career concerns, and few non-circus
families would ever think of encouraging their children to become circus
performers. With no formal American circus training available, the result,
quite naturally, is that there are very few first rank American circus
performers.

The best of the North American circus training schools is located in a
renovated train station in downtown Montreal, Canada. The National Circus
School was established in 1980 by Guy Caron, who would also later direct the
big school of circus arts at Chalons-sur-Marne in France. He is the former
artistic director of Canada's Cirque du Soleil, and is for the most part
responsible for the abundance of genuinely talented young artists that become
Soleil performers. In the brief decade of its existence, the school and its
students have won major international recognition. Over two hundred students,
both beginners and professionals, may enroll in a four-term variety of courses
including mime, dance, commedia, trick cycling, trapeze, juggling, acrobatics,
circus history, French language, and philosophy. The school is recognized by
the Quebec Ministry of Education as a "private school of public interest," able
for the first time in the world to grant a degree in circus arts. Also
available are individual courses and workshops, and special programs for
children. But its chief goal is a thorough professional training for future
circus artists, and it has the firm support of city, provincial, and federal
governments.

Several American circuses now also provide specific training
opportunities for interested youngsters to learn circus skills. The Big Apple
Circus operates the New York School for Circus Arts, whereby disadvantaged
youngsters at Harbor Jr. High School in East Harlem are taught a variety of
circus skills and academic subjects. The Pickle Family Circus School in San
Francisco offers periodic classes for children and adults. In St. Louis, the
Circus Arts School serves about 150 youngsters in gym classes in several
schools and YMCAs, out of whom has developed a crack performance team called
the "Arches." Their instructors, Alexandre Sacha Pavlata and Jessica Hentoff,
are aerialists with the Circus Flora, with which the school is closely
associated. The idea is that teaching circus skills also involves teaching fear
control, stick-to-it-iveness, trust, self-confidence and self-discipline. When
emotionally troubled and economically strapped kids get good positive strokes
and a lot of personal focused attention for three hours a week, they start to
feel better about themselves. Circus skills are intended to combat the feelings
of hopelessness and low self-esteem that lead to all sorts of abuses. "A kid
who walks a wire can see what he can do with his life, dream to be something
more," says Ivor David Balding, founder of the Circus Flora.

Several American communities have begun to share the feeling that circus
training makes an excellent education for children who are not necessarily
bound for circus careers. Fine Arts departments like the one at South Mountain
High School in Phoenix, Arizona, and physical education departments like
Eastmont High School's in Wenatchee, Washington, are developing basic circus
skills courses. At least two communities, one in Florida and one in Indiana,
have developed outstanding independent circus programs that operate in tandem
with their public school systems.

The Sailor Circus in Florida is open to all students from Sarasota
County schools who maintain a C average or better. Director Bill Lee identifies
"the pursuit of excellence" as the school's governing philosophy, and he and
his professional staff seek to engender in each student feelings of
accomplishment and mutual respect. In October, the youngsters begin practicing
a variety of performance skills in their own permanent circus building. By the
end of March some sixty-odd students are ready to present their annual Sarasota
Sailor Circus. Because many of the kids are from circus families clustered in
the Sarasota area, it's not surprising that the show generates both a
considerable talent among its performers and a considerable enthusiasm among
its audiences. With a special dispensation from the Ringling show, ordinarily
fiercely protective of its famous copyrighted title, the Sailor Circus calls
itself "The Greatest Little Show on Earth." In 1989, it celebrated its fortieth
year.

In the same year, the Peru, Indiana, Amateur Circus celebrated its
thirtieth anniversary. It is the feature event of an Annual Circus City
Festival held to preserve the heritage of the American Circus Corporation's
residency in Peru. It also exists to serve youth, and it is an enormous
community effort involving volunteers and professionals. Circuit Court Judge
Bruce Embrey, who serves as one of three volunteer ringmasters, suggests that
the circus teaches a sense of community and responsibility that is hard for
kids to come by these days. "I've never had a circus kid come before me in
court," he grins. In a week of frenetic activity capped by a two-hour circus
parade, over two hundred young people from Miami County, ranging in age from
six to twenty, put on ten performances. A spot is
found for anyone who wants to work hard enough. A smaller group of fifty or so
youngsters also perform as a road tour company throughout the region during the
summer months. The Festival performances are held in the Peru Circus Building,
which also contains a well-stocked small circus museum; it was adapted from an
old lumber warehouse, and has a high, tent-like roof specially designed for the
circus. The performances are the culmination of a year
of preparation by the kids, under the guidance of head trainer Bill Anderson
and his staff. Adults are involved only as trainers, staff and teachers,
clowns, and in a magnificent sixty-piece circus band led by high school band
director Tom Gustin. The kids do all the rest.

Other circus schools are privately-run operations, such as San
Francisco's "Make a Circus," which teaches children in the audience circus
skills as part of the show, or Camp Winnarainbow, a kind of counter-culture
summer circus camp for California children. Much more comprehensive and
thorough professional training is provided by Paul Pugh's venerable Wenatchee
Youth Circus in north central Washington State. It has operated since 1952,
with forty to eighty performers, high school-aged and younger. They sometimes
tour up to 10,000 miles in the summers to pay their yearly expenses. Their
extensive equipment is loaded into eight custom-built "circus wagons" and
carried on a flat-bed truck. They carry no tent, performing in the open air,
and their shows display every aspect of the traditional circus with the
exception of animal acts. It is an ambitious and popular program, demonstrating
professional quality in its youngsters and enjoying the firm support of its
community.

Still another approach is taken by the Circus of the Kids, formed by
Bruce Pfeffer in 1982. He was then was joined by Tammy Lutter, a fire-eater,
clown, trick bicyclist, and elementary school teacher. Tammy had been spending
her summers teaching circus skills at the French Woods Festival, a summer
performing arts camp for children in upper New York State. Together, Bruce and
Tammy developed a plan whereby they approach a school system and offer one and
two-week circus training workshops to one or more groups of students in grades
one through twelve. They bring in all the safety equipment and costumes, and
can offer complete workshop programs in acrobatics, juggling, trapeze artistry,
and clowning. The program also extends to workshops for parents and teachers.
Part of the goal is to promote academics and responsibility, and Bruce has
developed with associates at the University of Louisville an extensive
syllabus, "Circus across the Curriculum," to go with the circus skills
workshops. There are separate curricula with circus motifs in reading, creative
writing, math, science, history and geography. Each one is broken into sections
appropriate for students in kindergarten through high school. The workshop
period is capped by a final "all-star" demonstration-performance for the
public. In the summers, a longer and more extensive training program now serves
as a part of the performance offerings at French Woods. The Circus of the Kids
has reached over 50,000 enthusiastic youngsters since Bruce began it. The
program has garnered some rave reviews from administrators, teachers and
parents, who talk about their students' dramatic improvements in attitude, in
capacity to trust, and in self-esteem.

The charming little Circus Smirkus, begun in 1987 by Rob Mermin as a
summer camp program in northern Vermont, taps into the energy and idealism of
its young performers. In July, twenty young people aged ten to seventeen show
up at Mermin's farm for two weeks of intensive training in circus skills, and
then they embark on an ambitious tour around the state, performing twenty-eight
shows in nineteen days in eleven towns. Their teachers are caring
professionals, like Irina Gold, former coach of the USSR Olympic gymnastics
team and consultant with the Big Apple Circus. A non-profit enterprise, the
Circus Smirkus was at first funded in part by the Catamount Arts Foundation,
but it is now self-sustaining from contributions, tuition, and box office
receipts, along with some corporate support. Mermin, who "ran away" for at
least several blocks to the circus when he was a young boy, and then again more
seriously when he was in college, wants to provide the opportunity for his
performers to run away to the circus for at least six weeks in their young
lives. He describes it as "a metaphor for stepping outside self-made
boundaries, taking risks, accepting unforeseen challenges, and tasting the
potential of our human spirit. First dreaming, then going for it!"
N Donny Osman, the circus' ringmaster and associate
director, who is also the director of the Governor's Institute on the Arts,
describes the primary value of the circus as "empowerment." Smirkus is a
process of planting the suggestion that their students, and by extension their
audiences, have a sense of power over their own lives, that they are free to
dare and define their own limits, and that they may both offer and seek
cooperation with others involved in the same quest. One look at the faces of
these performers suggests that the Circus Smirkus is working.
They are ordinary children, but they are also talented, intense,
dedicated, supportive of each other, proud, determined, and full of joy. The
true spirit of the show was amply demonstrated midway through the summer of
1989, when a tragic automobile accident resulted in the death of a much-loved
counselor and the hospitalization of the severely injured Mermin for the rest
of the tour. Hours after the accident, the kids gathered together to mourn.
They hugged, and they cried; and then as a group they made a decision, and they
took action to raise the level of their own, each other's, and their audience's
lives. The next day, they performed, and they smiled. Few spectators knew how
they suffered and how they grew, but they did both; and nowhere has the paradox
of the true spirit of circus been more evident.

All of these school enterprises have in common that they are in one way
or another geared towards at least one public performance by the students.
Spectators fortunate enough to be in the audience have a unique opportunity to
participate in a circus spirit that is greatly enhanced by the naive, wide-eyed
enthusiasm and commitment of the young performers. None of them take their own
new accomplishments for granted; emotions run high, and the excitement is
catching. If the execution of an acrobatic trick doesn't always match the level
of those who have spent their lives in performance, the energy, the
determination, and the genuine expressions of joy often far surpass the
professionals.

At the college level, there are a few courses in circus skills offered
at Florida State University, New York University, and other campuses around the
country, usually taught as part of the theatre department offerings. The Gamma
Phi Circus at Illinois State is the oldest ongoing college circus program in
the country. Celebrating its 54th edition in 1990, it was actually founded in
1929 by Clifford "Pops" Horton as an honorary gymnastics fraternity, but shut
down for five years during World War II. Now with over one thousand alumni,
Gamma Phi performs annually with about sixty members, all full-time students
and faculty at Illinois State. The Flying High Circus, begun in 1947 by Jack
Haskin at Florida State, is a one-semester, one-credit course in stage and
aerial skills that results in completely self-supporting full three-ring
performances under their own tents. In 1989, sixty-eight students performed in
the Flying High, "just for the fun of it." Since 1960, the Flying High has also
conducted a summer residency at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia, and
an ambitious road touring program which includes Europe. There is only one
course on the history of the circus, taught at the University of Virginia. The
Ringling enterprise has operated its famous Clown College at winter quarters in
Venice, Florida, since 1968, and now has over one thousand alumni. It is
actually not a college at all, but a purely professional training school,
designed to add new faces to the diminishing pool of American circus clowns in
the late sixties, with an incidental eye on its public relations value. Every
American citizen might well benefit from completing its comprehensive
psychiatric questionnaire-application, but the school is intended only for
those seeking professional careers as clowns. Virtually every major American
circus employs at least one graduate of Clown College. Its intensive program is
only ten weeks long, and tuition is free. Out of the 2,000 to 3,000 yearly
applicants, Clown College can accommodate at best only thirty men and women.
They range from fresh high school graduates to older professionals seeking new
careers, and approximately one third of them will be offered contracts with the
Ringling show. Their final school performance is sometimes called the funniest
final exam in the world.

Other clown schools springing up around the country, such as those in
Houston, Atlanta, and the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, provide only brief
introductory or professional refresher courses. All such schools, of course,
focus only on clowning, and pretty hastily at that. There is little opportunity
for a comprehensive, substantive circus education anywhere in the United States
outside the circus itself.

There is a noteworthy difference between all the American offerings, and
the Canadian and European schools. With the exception of Clown College, the
usually non-profit American circus school efforts are geared so far primarily
as liberal arts education or as community service programs, rather than as
professional training schools. Some of their public and private funding is
undoubtedly predicated on the condition that they perform social service. Their
goals are well-illustrated by the New York School of Circus Arts's boast that
its students "discover that balancing commitments is as difficult as balancing
on a wire, and that juggling responsibilities is as tricky as juggling
oranges." While circus afficionados admit that the goal of educating committed
and responsible citizens with circus training is certainly a commendable one,
they worry that American circus schools don't necessarily provide the grounds
for exceptional circus talent. On the other hand, they may be reassured that
these schools do teach about the circus; and what's more, that we in the
audience can learn from their performances to value all that the circus can be.
Furthermore, exceptional talent does indeed emerge from the American schools.
Competent and sometimes inspired students do in fact go on to professional
circus careers. The Back Street Flyers, a black break-dancing acrobatic company
trained by the Circus Flora's Sacha Pavlata when he was a master teacher with
the Big Apple's New York School of Circus Arts, won a silver medal at the
International Circus School competitions and went on to perform for three years
with the Big Apple. Talented, eleven-year-old Lizzie Uthoff wowed Flora
audiences in 1989, after only a few months of working with Sacha, and she shows
considerable promise as an acrobat. And two veteran
trapezists from the Peru Amateur Circus, young Chris Robinson and Peggy
Matheny, took a third place bronze medal in the 1989 International Youth Circus
Competition in Verona, Italy. These and other signs of excellence from American
circus schools are no small achievements.

Circus educators are eager to find new and better paths for American
would-be circus artists to achieve excellence. Pavlata, for one, hopes that in
addition to its goal of lifting students out of the lost world of the ordinary,
the Circus Arts School will become a major circus professional training
institution, that will funnel its students into the major circuses of the world
as readily as Canada's National Circus School is starting to do. The "Piccola
Flora," a mini-circus performed by the Flora troupe's dozen or so children,
which was instituted in the summer of 1988, is perhaps one step in that
direction. But without a major shift in values that many Americans are
unprepared to pay for, we will never have the training opportunities equivalent
to those that create the magnificent Chinese acrobats. Here, the circus is not
the established social institution that makes such excellence possible; and we
do prefer after all to leave the responsibility for the pursuit of excellence
up to the individual, and not to the state. So perhaps one or two outstanding
professional circus schools on the North American continent are sufficient to
accommodate the rare artist who will seek them out. But it's too soon to tell.
Contemporary American circus schools are all young, and the 1990s will
determine how or if they are to meet the needs of the American circus.

Section F. New Tops

This brings us to four major "new-wave" circuses and one new
"spectacular" that many critics have already been calling the circuses of the
future. That may be an ironic label for at least three of these shows, who
profess to be more interested in rediscovering the circus of the past; and all
five of them are in one way or another based on traditional European circus
performance formats. In 1988, Clive Barnes, long time circus fan and theatre
critic for the
New York Post, wrote a series of articles primarily on three of the circuses. His
words have been widely quoted as heralding the beginning of a new circus
renaissance. Be that as it may, during the end of the '80s the Pickle Family
Circus, the Big Apple Circus, the Circus Flora, the Cirque du Soleil, and the
Circo Tihany are redefining what circus is.

What the five shows do and how they are structured is new to American
audiences. They are distinctly different from all the traditional circuses we
discussed in the early pages of this chapter. For one thing, all five were
created within ten years of each other from scratch, out of the sweat and hard
work of contemporary dreamers. Secondly, all five have earned a considerable
international reputation for excellence. Thirdly, they have taken a much more
theatrical approach to the circus than their traditional colleagues, and have
often been described as having "redefined the circus." Within that context,
four of them are intimate one-ring circuses in which performers seem to be an
integral part of a single theatrical performance, each act proceding logically
from the one before in a loosely-structured story line. Fourthly, because they
are different and have rejected traditional formats, they have sometimes been
the objects of resentment or jealousy among some traditional fans. All five
generate hot debate on what circus really is: Can there be a circus without
animals, or without a death-defying sense of danger, or without spectacle, or
with too much spectacle, or without circus music, or without even a ring? And
finally, all but one of the circuses are non-profit operations that depend
heavily on outside contributions from their own fans and grants from
foundations, corporations and all levels of government. In some cases less than
50% of production costs are borne by ticket sales. Although these shows tend to
have higher ticket prices than traditional circuses, no one would suggest that
raising admissions any higher is any answer to the precarious state of circus
economics. The Big Apple's Dominique Jando reminds us that the spiralling cost
of Broadway musical theatre tickets has virtually eliminated ordinary
middle-income audiences. The arts are expensive, the circus is especially
expensive, and they both need supplemental income. Like musical theatre and
opera, circus is extravagant by its very nature. The arts, including circus
arts, have always been state-supported in some fashion in Europe, and we may
have to get used to that idea here too if we want them preserved at all.

But despite their similarities, the five shows are just as different
from each other as they are alike. Only Soleil and Tihany boast of being a
brand new circus art form, and they have little in common. Only two of the
shows, Big Apple and Flora, have animal acts. The five headquarters are
geographically widely separated, reflecting philosophical goals aimed at very
different audiences. And their approaches vary from intimate clowning, through
death-defying high-tech, to Las Vegas spectacle.

The Pickle Family Circus, the oldest of the five in their present forms,
was started in San Francisco in 1974. It travels mostly in the West, but it has
made occasional side trips to Alaska and London, and most recently to New York,
where in the summer of 1989 they were invited to appear at the International
Theatre Festival at Stony Brook. Customarily, the Pickles play in parks and
playgrounds under the open skies, with canvas side walls and no top, although
they also enjoy the chance to escape California weather in indoor auditoriums.

The first thing spectators notice when watching Pickle is that the
clowns are in control. It was founded by clowns, and it is designed and
performed by clowns, and they are experts at the whole range of comedy, pathos,
physical slapstick and especially juggling. Audiences don't take long to get
the idea that they are participating in an event which is an expression of
love, respect and support. It is being passed like juggling balls and clubs
between company members and between the audience and the company. Entire silent
conversations take place with juggling clubs. And yes, one giant balloon, maybe
eight feet in diameter and probably the biggest juggling ball in the world, is
passed among audience members, bouncing over outreached arms and laughing faces
until it bursts and showers confetti all over the place. The feeling is one of
belonging to the proverbial one big happy family, and of course that is exactly
what is intended and what the word "family" is doing in the title. The
approximately thirty troupers are not a biological but a social family.
Fourteen of them perform, but everybody, from Judy Finelli, the artistic
director, to Ranna Bieschke, the much loved road manager/massage therapist, to
the kids, contributes to the family spirit. The audience is invited to share in
it too. Every show is like a party: strangers in the audience talk to each
other, and cast members sit down to chat with audience stragglers when it's
over.

There is more to Pickle than clowns and family, even though traditional
fans may search this circus in vain for "death-defying" acts or even one
four-legged animal. Accidents and falls can happen in any circus, but no one
here courts disaster or uses life-threatening danger to titillate audience
palates; safety wires or nets are in evidence when deemed advisable. As for the
animals, it's not that the Pickles have any bone to pick with traditional
circuses and their animals, it's just that they themselves would prefer not to
put animals in a truck and haul them around the countryside. Their interest
lies exclusively with the two-legged sort.

There are acrobats, wire-walkers, hand balancers and trapeze artists,
all demonstrating expertise and enjoyment. They perform with a dramatic flair
which is inspired by a unifying theme, such as myth and folk tales. In fact,
the second half of the shows is given over to a theatrical story, loosely told
in the tradition of turn-of-the-century jugglers and set in a Parisian
restaurant, the "Café des Artistes" in 1988, and the "Café Chaotique" in 1989.
The real Pickle trademark, "the big juggle," comes at the end of the show: The
entire company— everybody— juggles, and the air is filled with
assorted crockery, glassware and pies moving in every conceivable direction.
The flying dishes are accompanied by the sounds of frenetic shouting and
laughter, and a dynamic five-piece jazz band.

There is youth and idealism and energy at the Pickle which can almost be
classified as zeal. It is the legacy of Larry Pisoni, also known by his clown
identity as Lorenzo Pickle, from whom the show takes its name. Larry and Peggy
Snider were both members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, one of America's top
guerilla theatres in the late 60s, and their decision to found the Pickle
Family Circus was perhaps as much a socio-political statement as an aesthetic
one. It was an idealistic way to combat a decaying society with fun. There was
to be no artificial division of labor and pay scale, no racism, no sexist use
of scantily clad chorines, and no cynicism. There was to be an emphasis on
community and social responsibility. The ideals remain valid today, as Pickle
performers continue to devote themselves to sharing their art without undue
concern for monetary rewards. Peggy continues as their executive director,
after Larry left in 1988 to pursue a career as an independent clown performer.
The Pickle Family Circus is now undoubtedly the only circus in the country
featuring women as both executive and artistic directors, and for that matter
even as boss clown. She wouldn't be called "boss" on the Pickle, but Queenie
Moon can hold her own among the great clowns of all time.

There were (at least) two other future circus founders juggling with the
lively San Francisco Mime Troupe in the early '70s: Paul Binder and Michael
Christensen. The two became fast friends and developed a comedy juggling act
which they toured through the streets of Europe and at the exciting Nouveau
Cirque de Paris. Paul had never gone much to the circus as a child: "It seemed
distant and smelly and seedy to me."
N But the French circus was different.
With business degrees from Dartmouth and Columbia, he was as much a businessman
as a juggler, and he now dreamed of bringing "classical" circus to America. On
July 20, 1977, with a lot of help from friends, he and Christensen opened the
first Big Apple Circus season, which would play to 45,000 people in New York's
Battery Park. He became its artistic director and ringmaster, and Christensen
became the popular Mr. Stubs, clown extraordinaire. The talented Katja
Schumann, a member of the famous equestrian Schumanns who have operated
circuses in Germany and Denmark since 1870, added grace and class when she made
her first appearance with the Big Apple in 1981. She soon became the wife and
partner of Paul Binder and mother of a new circus dynasty, and she continues as
the prize-winning architect and performer of one of the best varieties of
equestrian acts in the country.

Within ten years of its founding, annual Big Apple audiences have grown
to well over a quarter of a million people. Its colorful round tent holds about
1,800 patrons. At the suggestion of Sacha Pavlata, then a featured aerialist
with the circus, it was pitched at Damrosch Park adjacent to the Lincoln Center
for the Performing Arts, where it has become a regular feature of New York's
Christmas season. They have gained the corporate support of Exxon, Macy's, The
New York Times Foundation, Viacom, Warner Communications, Columbia Pictures,
several major banking enterprises, and many others. Big Apple's mission as a
not-for-profit educational and performing arts institution and its charter with
the host city for which it is named assure that the circus will be brought
directly to the people in all five boroughs. It has also embarked on annual
tours as far south as Washington, D.C., as far north as Shelburne, Vermont, and
as far west as Cleveland. They travel the road with about 120 people, forty of
whom are performers, two elephants, and Katja's horses.

The style, tempo, character and sensibility of this circus are strongly
American, but its format uses the classical European circus for its model. The
Big Apple defines classical circus as taking place in a "single, intimate ring
with the surrounding audience interacting with both performers and each other."
It includes "performances by acrobats, gymnasts, aerialists, clowns, trainers
and animals. Animals as performers are central to the classic mode, and the
respect for animals is reflected in their treatment as a part of the circus and
in the presentation of relationships between humans and animals."
N

Big Apple is also following the European trend called "new circus,"
which emphasizes theatricality rather than spectacle. "It evokes a wide range
of feelings with the use of strong lighting and music."
N This results in an energy
not unlike that of a Broadway show. The traditional ringmaster's intrusive
announcements have become increasingly rare, as the high-quality international
acts are left to speak for themselves. The performances are moved forward by a
central thematic story around which they are loosely organized. The 1988-89
season featured an East-West détente theme called "The Big Apple Circus meets
the Monkey King." It focused on the imagined adventures of a legendary comic
folk hero from China's Beijing opera tradition. The détente theme was made
extremely poignant at the end of the tour, when real events in Beijing's
Tiananmen Square resulted in a series of traumatic defections, including six by
members of the celebrated Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe appearing with the show. For
the 1989-1990 season, the Big Apple brought back Barry Lubin, one of their
original featured clown troupe, to headline a new story-theme called "Grandma
Goes West." The show is a "loving tribute" to Buffalo Bill and his co-stars,
Annie Oakley and Chief Sitting Bull. It has an "Old West" theme similar to one
used by Circus Flora several years earlier, and incorporates several unique
western-oriented acts, such as a superb "Pony Express Ride" by Katja Schumann,
the marvelous lariat work of Vince Bruce, and a trained buffalo.

The Cirque du Soleil, the "Circus of the Sun," is a strictly Canadian
enterprise, and some may question what it is doing in a book focusing on
circuses in the United States. The answer is clear to anyone who has seen it on
any of its tours through Canada's neighbor to the South: Since it was founded
in 1984, it has had as much impact on contemporary American circus as any show
developed and operating exclusively within the United States. Its success has
been nothing short of phenomenal: In five short years it went from entertaining
30,000 to a half-million spectators annually; from 50 performances a year to
312; from 45 employees to 150, now including 35 performers; and from an annual
budget of $1.3 million to $11 million. At the same time subsidies from the
various levels of the Canadian government have fallen from 97% to under 10%.
Proud Canadian corporate sponsors like Bombardier, Inc., Canadian Airlines
International, Dominion Textile and La Laurentienne have eagerly participated
in picking up the slack, and the necessarily higher admission prices have not
kept happy audiences away. In 1987, the Cirque du Soleil was a finalist with
the likes of Molsen Breweries and IBM Canada for a "Business of the Year"
award. The business success of this ambitious enterprise has created some
internal problems, as must inevitably arise when artistic and commercial
interests vie for priorities.

But the Cirque du Soleil is no slouch in the artistic department either.
Straw house performances in Chicago, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Washington
and other American cities have earned it rave reviews. The brilliant young Guy
Caron was the artistic director for the first five years of Soleil's existence,
and is largely responsible for the show's unique approach. Performances are
given in a 130 foot, blue-and-yellow round tent made by the French
sail-manufacturer VoiliŠres du Sud-Ouest, which seats a relatively
intimate 1750 spectators. They are marked by a polished, high-tech look and
flow, complete with special effects, smoke and fog, dramatic lighting, colorful
modish costuming, and a stunning mod-rock musical accompaniment. All of this is
kept to an intimate level, however, and technology is never allowed to impress
for its own sake. There is no pomp or pure spectacle, and there are no
processions or armies of clowns and chorus girls. And to the dismay of
traditionalists, there are no animals. "I'd rather feed three artists than one
elephant," says founder and circus president Guy Laliberte.
N In fact, the presence of animals in
this show would even be distracting to its real purpose: an exploration of the
psychological and physical nature of the human being.

Despite all the technical wizardry, the human element is the real focus
of the Cirque du Soleil. It is completely devoted to playing with the idea of
what makes humans funny, and with exploring the outer limits of what humans can
do. A heavily theatrical and intimate emotional approach has replaced the big
production numbers of more conventional circuses. In the 1989 performances, the
clowns' and acrobats' routines were framed by a dream-like transformation. In a
swirl of magical smoke, a group of "ordinary" people wearing masks in a style
suggested by the commedia dell'arte were changed into magnificent circus
artists. But they eventually had to turn back into the ordinary people, happy
for the opportunity to have dreamed, but disappointed that their dreams can't
last. At the end of the show they go off to resume their less than demanding
lives.

The Cirque du Soleil performers are mostly under twenty-five years old,
and some are no more than children. They are gifted with the zeal of youth that
has thus far kept the show fresh and energetic. When they move on, whether
because of other ambitions, artistic or salary disputes with management, or
sheer exhaustion, their ranks are immediately filled from Chinese and other
international sources, and from the roles of the Canadian National Circus
School, with new faces eager to participate in the dream. For the 1989-90
edition of Soleil, Guy Caron, the original artistic director, had been replaced
by Gilles Ste-Croix, and 90% of the performers were new and fresh talent. In
fact there is a constant struggle to find ways of preserving artistic freshness
in the face of the demands of circus big business. LaLibert‚ likes to
book shows as little as ten days in advance, just to help keep everyone
flexible and avoid a sense of the routine. And improvisational rehearsals keep
everyone guessing what the clowns will do next.

It is impressive how funny a single clown in a circus ring can be, and
it is often embarassing to see how much he reveals about our own human nature.
The variety of ways in which the human body can be made to bend, balance, fly,
dance, walk, and cope with flying objects is disarmingly bewildering when
demonstrated by these young circus artists. Part of our surprise as spectators
at their display of talent comes from a deceptive sense of their ordinariness.
They do not appear to be perfect, superhuman, muscle-bound or unusually
beautiful: it is an unimpressive, ordinary-looking human body lifting that
weight, leaping from that dizzying height, or dancing so gracefully on that
thin wire. These circus performers don't strut or flaunt capes, and there is no
razzamatazz build-up into super-star status for any of them. The youth and
beauty and strength that they exhibit is not for self-aggrandizement. It is to
make all of us young and beautiful and strong.

The Cirque du Soleil was created in 1984 by young Guy LaLiberte‚
when he was himself only twenty-four years old. Like Paul Binder, the Big Apple
founder, he was a street performer who had spent some time travelling among
circuses in Europe, and he too had a keen sense for business. The two men also
share a common reputation for mincing no words when sharing their opinions of
traditional American shows: "I hate traditional Circus!"
N he says, causing hundreds of traditionalists to gnash their
teeth. Nonetheless, he stubbornly applied for and received a grant from the
Canadian government to tour a new kind of circus in celebration of the 450th
anniversary of the discovery of Quebec. Although plenty of American circuses
and their imitators had toured throughout Canada in the past, the country had
never had any strong national circus traditions of its own; Lalibert‚
was free to make up his own definitions of the genre. He found a name for his
show by looking in a dictionary of symbols. He saw "'Soleil, sun.' It means
youth, power, freshness. Everything was there."
N Michel Clair, in 1984 the Minister
responsible for Quebec's participation in International Youth Year, agrees.
Looking at the new circus for the first time: "Observe them," he said. "Are
they not of the sun?"
N

The most recent of the four new-style circuses to come into existence is
the Circus Flora. It is named after the baby elephant who is its star, and who
was herself the namesake of Babar and Celeste's first daughter, Flora, in Jean
de Brunhoff's charming "Babar" stories.

The Circus Flora is the brain child of Ivor David Balding, the son of a
British polo player who came to America to sell horses. Another circus runaway,
Balding dropped out of his freshman year at Harvard University in the 1950s to
train with the Cirque Medrano in Paris on the advice of actress Eva
LaGallienne. But it was the theatre that would capture his early career
interests; during the '60s he was the highly successful Broadway producer of
such plays as
Steambath,
The Man in the Glass Booth,
Lenny, and
The Ginger Man. Nonetheless, he found himself increasingly drawn to the circus,
feeling that the reality of circus had the capacity to transcend the illusion
of theatre. He began to produce several television circus specials, and he
became the celebrated Jimmy Chipperfield's general manager for a European tour
of Circus World. In 1980, Paul Binder hired him as a consulting producer for
the Big Apple Circus, and he became involved with several Shrine circuses
productions as well.

All this time, David was formulating plans to take out his own circus,
committed to "reviving the circus as an art form." He began with a loan from
his sister and brother-in-law, Sheila and Sam Jewell, who have found themselves
enmeshed in the world of the circus ever since. While he was on a photo safari
in Africa in 1984, Balding bought Flora, a three-year-old African elephant
orphaned by poachers. He had her flown to the U.S. and designed his circus
around her. "You can't have a circus without an elephant, a horse, a clown and
a pretty girl," he said, "and that's the order of importance."
N The Circus Flora was invited to
make its debut at Gian Carlo Menotti's prestigious Spoleto Festival in
Charleston, South Carolina in 1986. A stunning surprise to the culturally elite
audiences of the Festival, it was an immediate popular, artistic and critical
success. In fact it was such a hit that it was invited back for a second
appearance at Spoleto in 1988, the first production of any kind to be so
honored. The following year Menotti issued an unprecedented invitation for them
to appear at the 1990 Spoleto Festivals in both South Carolina and Italy.

Except for the special lighting effects, Circus Flora performances are
for the most part recreations of the circus arts as they existed in the
nineteenth century. They tend to range between comedy and the classical
dangerous presentations of skill on horseback and in the air, and they are
presented in an intimate setting. Even the costumes are authentic nineteenth
century designs with heavy overtones of the commedia troupes. Performances are
not only theatrical but narrative, and in a format which allows them to exhibit
the best of European circus traditions in an American historical context. They
begin always with a "come-on" or "charivari," the arrival of all the performers
together, with a special appearance by the charming Flora. For every
performance, the clown Yo-yo narrates the story of her fictional Italian
family, the Baldinis, who have brought their circus and their elephant to tour
America. In 1986, the Circus Flora "recreated" the arrival of the Baldinis in
Charleston in 1810, suggesting they were the first European circus to come for
such a tour. In fact, although early European circuses did land in Charleston,
the Baldinis never existed except as a Balding creation. Coincidentally,
though, there was an early American Flora: She was in 1827 the seventh elephant
to be imported into the United States, and the first to travel with a
menagerie. The 1988 edition of Circus Flora was called
The Journey West and included exciting troupes of Native American dancers among its
features. Following the Baldinis as they moved westward into the new frontier
from St. Louis in 1843, it provided opportunities for Flora to meet a friendly
performing buffalo, and Yo-yo to meet an Indian guide. Finding the mountains
impassable, the Baldinis returned to St. Louis and took a river boat to New
Orleans for the 1989 edition,
Back to the Bayou, which had a cajun theme. A pirate's theme takes over in 1990, as the
Baldinis once more set sail for the West, and attempt to cross the isthmus at
Panama.

Flora's single-ring performances are given in a red and white striped,
light-tight round tent essentially similar to Big Apple's, Soleil's, and
Zerbini's. This one is made by the Baches company in Bordeaux, France; it seats
less than 1,500 people in a 120-foot round, but is somewhat higher than the
others, at the request of Sacha Pavlata, now a full-time partner, Technical and
Performance Director, and aerialist with the show. Its all-white interior also
adds to the illusion of height. Seating keeps audiences no further than forty
feet from the ring.

Among the thirty-five or so talented performers are some of the oldest
and most widely respected names in the business: Wallenda, Zoppe, and Pavlata,
among others. In 1989, after a year of hunting for a permanent home, the
company offices moved into St. Louis' Grand Avenue Performing Arts Center. St.
Louis thus became the third contemporary American City, after San Francisco and
New York, to have its own resident circus. Impressed by both their performances
and the obvious value of Sacha's circus-in-the-schools program, the city has
given them a five-year lease on some vacant land. The 1989 performance tour was
considerably abbreviated, as the directors and their supporters devoted their
time primarily to establishing the credibility of the school, reexamining their
goals, and struggling to solidify their financial base. St. Louis audiences
have been enthusiastic, and if Balding and Pavlata are able to muster
sufficient funding from private, corporate and public sources, there are plans
for a permanent winter quarters, a school building, and an indoor performance
arena. Balding claims the circus is now permanently in his blood, and he could
never be drawn back into the New York theatre scene. Baby elephant Flora, on
the other hand, who by the summer of 1989 was a gangly, strapping
eight-year-old, began a series of ballet lessons from internationally acclaimed
avant-garde choreographer Martha Clarke. She will make her New York acting and
dancing debut in 1990, in a new theatre piece by Clarke at the Brooklyn Academy
of Music's Next Wave Festival.

Before we leave our look at influential new circuses in the United
States, with a slight overlap into Canada, we might do well to take a brief
look at what is going on south of the Rio Grande. In Mexico, circus is big
business, and people tend to take their circus arts much more seriously. There
is a long-standing tradition of proud family circuses which are at least as
fine as any in the United States. Many of the great Mexican flying families own
their own circuses. Outstanding among traditional Mexican circuses are the the
Circo de Renato, the New York Circus, the Circo Sventes and finally, the Circo
Atayde, an arena and tent show with a polished appearance and a variety of
outstanding international acts. If outstanding Mexican acts in some Mexican
circuses like the Atayde are rare, it is only because D. R. Miller and others
have lured them north of the border with the promise of better wages.

Much of the talk in the Mexican circus world centers around a unique,
giant new show that has been touring there for several years and is anything
but traditional. It recently moved from South America into Mexico, where it has
been a huge success. For sheer size and spectacle, the already legendary Circo
Tihany promises to give the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus a
run for its money as it seeks to expand its routes with the "Circus Tihany
Spectacular Celebrates America 'The Magic is Here' 1990 Tour" into the United
States. Tihany is the brainchild of a Hungarian, Franz Czeisler, and named
after the town of his birth. Czeisler has been a circus man for 40 years. He
speaks eleven languages, performs sparkling magic tricks he personally learned
from the likes of Houdini and Blackstone, and captivates his audiences with his
infectious enthusiasm. The 180 people in his cast and crews travel on
sixty-five trucks and trailers, and he uses two immaculate 200 by 240 foot
Italian tents. It takes four full days to set them up, so the show hopscotches
between tents from stand to stand. Stands are usually a minimum of ten days.
Each tent holds almost four thousand people in luxurious contoured seating;
there are no bleachers. There is no ring. Everyone
faces in one direction, towards a massive 80 by 100 foot proscenium stage made
with the elevated flatbeds of Czeisler's trucks. Two long curved stairways on
either side, lit by crystal chandeliers, form the show entrances. It's a
spiffy, Las Vegas-style production, with even the stage hands working in
tuxedos.

Many would consider Tihany a tented theatrical extravaganza, and not a
real circus at all. Czeisler can perhaps best describe it himself:

My show is an original blend of the Las Vegas type
extravaganza—embellished by hydraulic stages that go up and down,
colorful dancing waters, and music hall dancers—with the traditional
circus. In it, I have introduced and developed a presentation that has never
existed under the big top anywhere. Yet it is one which is still rooted in the
European circus tradition of excellence, and commitment to treating people with
love and respect.

Whatever it's called, Tihany is yet another example of the
many directions from which American circuses might choose their future.
Circuses must continue to evolve and change, just as they have for thousands of
years, despite the protestations of traditionalists. Only the passage of time
will reveal whether this or any of the four "new-wave" circuses is a passing
fad, or the harbinger of a new epoch in circus performance that might compare
favorably with Coup's and Barnum's 1872 circus enterprise.